Chapter 917

When Emerald Lake exploded into a sky‑filled mist, Yan Buji knelt on one knee and coughed up a black blood clot. Lin Qingli's ice veil wrapped around his chest, barely plugging the bowl‑sized wound. The withered bones of the Xisha Lao Gui scattered around, each bone dissolving into a foul, sticky fluid.

"He... dead?" Lin Qingli trembled as they went to feel Yan Buji's breath.

Yan Buji tore open his collar, and a Swallow Desire Pot mark appeared on his chest: "Ninety percent." He spat out black blood: "The remaining ten percent of the Lao Gui's residue isn't here; that Lao Gui is truly cunning!"

"We should go." Yan Buji grabbed a Wheel of Destiny fragment and thrust it into the Swallow Desire Pot: "Xisha Lao Gui forged this oasis into a destiny furnace; now its core is destroyed......"

Before the words finished, the void split with countless fissures. The two and the beast teleported out just before the space collapsed completely, a deafening roar echoing behind them.

Above the sea of sand, where the oasis once stood now lay a bottomless giant pit.

On a sand dune three hundred li away, Yan Buji toyed with a jade tablet peeled from the Wheel of Destiny fragment: "Sure enough, it hides something good." The tablet's surface bore three blood‑red ancient seals reading "Hall of the Departed," faintly radiating the cadence of the Reincarnation Dao.

Yan Buji furrowed his brows, picked up the jade tablet and carefully sensed it.

"So that's how it is."

This Xisha Lao Gui was originally a Buddhist cultivator of the Great Thunder Sound Temple on Ling Mountain, but after encountering the Dao of Cause and Effect, he turned to practice cause and effect.

It seems that being entangled with cause and effect too much altered Xisha Lao Gui's temperament, and he was eventually suppressed by a Great Vehicle Stage Buddhist cultivator of Ling Mountain in the Endless Desert, imprisoned there for tens of thousands of years, and finally died as his Dao extinguished.

However, because this man practiced the Great Path of Cause and Effect, although the original host died, his flesh, infused with cause and effect, was placed in the deadly Endless Desert and rebirthed from death; his body regained spiritual intelligence for another life, and that oasis had actually been the place where Xisha Lao Gui was originally suppressed and sealed.

"The Destiny Tree Wheel Method... the Cause‑and‑Effect sect... so that's it, the Tree‑Person Technique was his creation!" Yan Buji's pupils contracted as he saw some of the methods Xisha Lao Gui had left on the jade tablet, instantly understanding why the two of them had met.

In the end, there also seemed to be a cross‑temporal master‑disciple bond; although the other never taught him anything, the Tree‑Person Technique still gave Yan Buji considerable aid in his cultivation.

Even now that Yan Buji has cultivated into a Fundamental Method Empress, the Tree‑Person Technique within the Heavenly Gate Five‑Elements Method remains a reserve of spiritual energy, ensuring that Yan Buji does not instantly lose combat ability even in harsh environments.

"Injecting Dao Mark into a symbiotic spirit plant to cultivate an immortal plant that bears the Energy Dao..."

Yan Buji thought about his Tree‑Person Technique, which is based on symbiosis with the Nine‑leaf Ghost Orchid; the Nine‑leaf Ghost Orchid's most special…

"If I were to practice this Destiny Tree Wheel Method, I would probably have to split the Heavenly Gate Five‑Elements Method, focusing solely on the Nine‑leaf Ghost Orchid, and pour my Way of the Universe into the Nine‑leaf Ghost Orchid…"

After a while.

Yan Buji kicked aside the desiccated sand lizard carcass at his feet, and the tip of his Rift Staff lifted a twisted bronze compass. The compass needle spun wildly three and a half turns in the sandstorm, then suddenly locked hard toward the northeast, where a red rock ridge, jagged like a dog's tooth from wind erosion, lay.

"Finally found the exit." He stamped the compass underfoot, letting the shattered copper shards slash Lin Qingli's skirt hem, "Lin Fairy, move."

"Yes, senior!"

Lin Qingli's fingertip, where she was sealing a technique, trembled slightly, and the ice veil's transmission array drawn on the sand flickered on and off.

"Looks like the fellow fairy arrived quickly." Yan Buji squinted at the dark speck on the horizon, a teasing smile curling his lips.

Twelve sword lights pierced the sandstorm, and the golden pattern on the elder's cuff was exactly the seal of the Golden Gate Sect.

"Qingli, junior disciple!" The elder in a blue robe landed and flung a binding fairy rope: "Colluding with the other‑realm evil cultivator to steal the sect's treasure, you will be executed!"

Before Lin Qingli could speak, Yan Buji's Spirit‑binding Seal had already shattered a rock pillar three zhang away.

The falling debris happened to block the sword formation's direction; he darted forward, seizing the elder's Mingmen, his Sea‑Kun hammer pressing against the opponent's dantian: "You all really came quickly…"

Lin Qingli widened her eyes, a bad suspicion forming in her mind.

But Yan Buji would not give them any chance to speak.

Five days later, Lin Qingli finally found a trustworthy fellow disciple, and together they set out on the road back to Zhong Tian Zhi Yu.

Because they could not transfer from the Heavenly Spirit Realm, they had to take a more dangerous route!

Cross the Boundary Wall!

When the Golden Gate Sect's cloud‑boat passed through the final sandstorm.

Yan Buji leaned in the shadow of the mast, idly handling the storage ring he had taken from the elder.

Within the ring were three hundred Golden Gate mystic crystals that made his pupils shine, enough to refine the Asura Armor to the eighth transformation!

"Senior Yan..." Lin Qingli held the cabin door, about to speak but stopped.

"Fairy, feeling sorry for a fellow disciple?" Yan Buji snapped his fingers, shattering the tracking sigil in the ring, watching the powder drift toward the pursuing sand‑hawk flock, "After we cross the Boundary Wall, which do you think the Golden Gate Sect will do first—slay the poor Taoist, or clear the sect's doors?"

The cloud‑boat suddenly jolted violently, and ahead the void revealed countless mirror‑like fissures. Thick gray mist seeped from the cracks, and the sound of iron chains dragging on the ground could be heard faintly within the haze.

The helmsman disciple shouted in terror: "It's the Void‑Devouring Mist! Turn quickly…"

Before the words finished, a massive claw, sheathed only in bone armor, emerged from the gray mist. Yan Buji was even faster, his Sea‑Kun hammer wrapped in dark energy striking the cloud‑boat's core array eye.

The entire cloud‑boat shattered into pieces under the cover of the explosion; he hoisted Lin Qingli and plunged toward the nearest fissure: "Fairy, hold on tight."

The instant they passed through the mist, Yan Buji's hair on the back of his neck stood on end. This was no ordinary spatial fissure; tens of thousands of corpses floated beneath a gray‑purple sky, each body pierced through the clavicle by iron chains, the chains' ends attached to a writhing, tumor‑like Boundary Core.

"Boundary Wall." He said lightly, the Abni Sword in his hand already having pierced the incoming iron chain.

The moment the blade touched the chain, a mournful wail rang from the hilt into the Sea of Consciousness; those chains were in fact the spines of cultivators whose marrow had been drained!

The Golden Gate Sect elder struggled nearby, his right leg being corroded by the slime secreted from the tumor.

Yan Buji stepped on a floating corpse and leapt behind him, gently pressing his Spirit‑binding Seal onto the elder's Heavenly Spirit: "May I borrow your Golden Core for a moment."

The moment the elder's primordial spirit was torn away, the Boundary Core tumor suddenly split open a fissure. Yan Buji hauled Lin Qingli into the gap, a sour‑tinged chewing sound echoing behind them as the soulless bodies became fodder for the tumor.

The interlayer of the Boundary Wall was a mass of writhing viscera. Lin Qingli's ice veil blackened and corroded the moment it touched the flesh wall, while Yan Buji thrived like a fish in water. The Asura Armor's surface sprouted countless blood‑red threads, crazily siphoning the chaotic spiritual energy from the flesh wall.

"Twenty years ago, Zhong Tian Zhi Yu sent three hundred condemned prisoners," he said, a flame of Wenwu Fire igniting at his fingertip, burning a charred tunnel: "Fairy, how long do you think these 'Boundary Bricks' will last?"

At the tunnel's end stood an altar constructed from skulls.

Suspended above the altar was a broken bronze key, and around it floated a dozen fresh corpses—the other teams that had set out earlier.

Yan Buji sliced open the dantian of the nearest corpse and crushed a dim Golden Core: "Someone beat us again…"

"Senior, save me!" Lin Qingli seemed to be tangled by a monster within the Boundary Wall, struggling to resist.

Yan Buji acted as if he hadn't heard, focusing on using the Swallow Desire Pot to refine the lingering desire from the corpse.

Only when her breath was as faint as a wisp did he leisurely snap the chain: "Fairy, you should learn to bargain now."